The article “Event Scheduling Provokes Discontent Among Organizers” (Aug. 31, p. 56), concerning the state of scheduling events in the United States, was not only excellent but comprehensive.

To see so many fellow organizers question the current state of affairs has to be a wake-up call for all of us in the sport.

The only conclusion that one could make from reading the article is that in spite of Roger Haller and Malcolm Hook claiming they’re communicating, it’s quite apparent that they aren’t listening!

The U.S. Equestrian Federation Eventing Committee, which has the responsibility for international events and communicating the needs of the USEF to the Fédération Equestre Internationale, has done a terrible job of demonstrating to the FEI that conditions in the United States are considerably different then the rest of the eventing world and has created the current situation.

The long miles that riders and horses must travel to go to these FEI events can create additional pressure and unsafe conditions.

Plantation Horse Trials (Pa.) was turned down to run a CIC in 2007. Because of this situation, riders from U.S. Eventing Association Area II had to travel 10-plus hours to Georgia and then two weeks later travel another 10 hours to Canada to compete at the Bromont CCI**. Horses competing in both events could have spent up to 40 hours in a horse trailer in a two-week period.

I will let others decide if this qualifies as animal abuse!

Why? Just to qualify.

Prior to the FEI’s current system of qualifying, the USEF had a higher qualification requirement that riders had to use in order to qualify for the traditional three-day event.

Riders could qualify at any intermediate or advanced horse trial. If for any reason a rider couldn’t run a horse at a particular event, which required he or she to change their preparation for the three-day, then they knew that the next week they had another event to use for qualifying purposes.

I witnessed this process under the old system many times.

While at Fair Hill (Md.), our May event used to be one week before the Essex Three-Day Event (N.J.). In back-to-back years we had competitors in our event go on to Essex. One year three out of the top 10 in the CCI** at Essex prepared at our event, and another year we had the winner.

A solution for the current problem is for our leaders to insist to the FEI, yes insist, that our national events count as qualifying events as they did in the past.

The USEF could pay the FEI one fee annually, minimizing the amount of contact that the organizer would have to have with the FEI.

One needs to remember that Southern Pines (N.C.), Morven Park (Va.), Fair Hill, Plantation, Groton House (Mass.) and many other events were more than good enough to qualify horses and riders that then went on to win in FEI competitions.

The need to qualify horses and riders for CCIs has created an unsafe eventing environment; we now have a “qualifying frenzy” that one views at every CIC.

It would take me far too long to give examples of the “frenzy” witnessed at many events. Since the effort to get to CICs can be considerable, immense pressure is placed on experienced and inexperienced riders to qualify.

Under this proposed system the riders would have events from January to June to qualify, removing the ridiculous system that now exists.

Since the introduction of the Course Advisor Program in 1993, all of the intermediate and advanced courses have been brought up to standard under the leadership of Capt. Mark Phillips and company.

In the Aug. 31 article, Mr. Haller and Mr. Hook attempted to demonstrate their openness at communicating the planned schedule to the organizers. At the previewing of the calendar early in 2007, many organizers “communi-cated” to Mr. Haller and his committee major issues with the proposed plan only to see no change to the proposed plan at the next review.

Mr. Hook alludes to the change of Jersey Fresh impacting both MCTA (Md.) and Plantation Horse Trials due to weather considerations.

This year Jersey Fresh was very hot; however, the average temperature for Philadelphia on the first weekend in June is 72 degrees.

One of the reasons for going to the new short format was the belief that without the endurance and stamina elements, horses could compete in hotter conditions. The last I checked, the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong are going to be considerably hotter and more humid.

Mr. Hook stated, “I have contacted every organizer who has called me with a question.”

In April 2007 I wrote Mr. Hook, who is chairman of the USEF Eventing Committee, a three-page letter listing many of the concerns highlighted in the Chronicle. Almost four months later I’ve not received a single response to this letter.

In a June 7 conference call, Plantation Field Horse Trials’ application to conduct CICs in 2008 was tabled as the committee had certain concerns that they wanted Plantation organizers to respond to.

As I write this letter some three months later, the phone calls and e-mails that I, as the organizer of Plantation Horse Trials, have made have resulted in not a single communication from the USEF Eventing Committee addressing their concerns.

Mr. Haller totally misses the point I raised in the article concerning perceived or real conflict of interest.
We all are involved in the sport in multi-levels. I’m an organizer, course designer, owner, breeder, trainer and competitor. However, I’m not compensated in two positions by the National Equestrian Federation while at the same time being compensated by at least three to four CICs under consideration by the committee.

The USEF Eventing Committee is the only committee, to my knowledge, that approves licensed officials, dates and levels of competitions. Other sports have specific, specialized committees to address these tasks. The Eventing Committee’s responsibilities were instituted many years ago before there were programs for officials and are outdated. Changes to the responsibilities of the Eventing Committee need to be made.

You cannot ask organizers and riders to make the annual commitment in time and money when you have a committee that fails to provide the solutions to qualifying, scheduling and event management. 

Denis Glaccum, who began eventing in 1956, started organizing events in 1976 at Chesterland (Pa.). He’s also run events at Fair Hill (Md.), Plantation Field (Pa.) and Menfelt (Md.).